Fashion Week: It’s always sunny at a Manish Malhotra show

Having grown up on a big dose of Yash Chopra and Karan Johar films with tonnes of weddings and wedding clothes, it is natural to be excited about a Manish Malhotra show, one of the most successful Indian designers and pretty much the official designer of Bollywood.

I have often wondered what would it be like to be at a Malhotra show, which I finally got to do at the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week in Delhi. It was the most crowded show of the day. Women young and old, famous, not famous, were all there. Well, there were men too, though what do they do there? Malhotra has dressed some rather famous ones, including Shah Rukh Khan in the 2000 film “Mohabbatein”, and his collections feature men’s clothing.

The clothes were somewhat predictable; there was not much that I would not have seen otherwise or was not expecting, but that takes nothing away from them – they were some of the most gorgeous items to be featured on the Indian runway today.

Malhotra on Sunday showcased his “Mijwan” collection, created for the promotion of the Mijwan Welfare Society run by actress Shabana Azmi. Mijwan is a village near Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh. Women from Mijwan made the chikankari embroidery that showcased on the runway.

Contrary to what we imagine a Manish Malhotra collection to be, this was less ornate. But even less ornate here means a few hundred pounds of sequins.

His male models walked in kurtas with chikankari, worn with wide pants, and bandhgalas worn with chikan dupattas and jackets with colourblock sleeves.

Still, the focus was on women in this show. There were anarkalis, of course, complete with tassels and ties on the back, worn with wide pants or ghararas. There were long kurtas, worn with ghararas and lehengas.

He mixed and matched his outfits to go with the off-white and gold chikan dupattas. The designer used a wide palette of colours – yellow, orange, pink, green and off-white.

While Fashion Week will end, his next prominent runway will be the bridal aisle. He is designing clothes for the most awaited wedding of the year, that of Bollywood couple Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor, and cinema audiences soon will see his work in Karan Johar’s film, “Student of the Year”, starring Alia Bhatt.